Update 2: Kathyrn Bigelow defended her film in an LA Times OpEd on January 15, 2013. In it she claims that she thinks that "ingenious detective work" got us bin Laden and that people criticizing her film are trying to censor free expression. In my comments on her article I said in part:

Bigelow says, "Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn't mean it was the key to finding Bin Laden." If it wasn't key to finding bin Laden, then why do you depict it in your film as the key? If you claim authenticity and accuracy as you do in this OpEd and as your film does so from the start with its claim that it's "based on firsthand accounts of real events," eschewing even showing opening film credits so as to convey documentary veracity, then why falsely portray what role torture played? If you aren't trying to say that torture is "necessary" and that it worked, then why are you lionizing the people who committed war crimes in carrying out torture?

If you're disturbed by people who are "misreading" your film as an apology for torture, why don't you add a disclaimer at the beginning of your film that you have taken certain liberties with the historical events and that you regard torture as a crime against humanity, instead of writing this half-truthful OpEd? Why are you mischaracterizing your critics as wanting to censor the portrayal of torture when you know that our complaint is not that you show torture but that you show it as working and as the acts of heroes rather than of war criminals?

Update 1: Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney, just saw ZDT and tweeted her reaction. For anyone still out there (and there are still a lot of them, including Michael Moore!) who think that ZDT's not endorsing torture, check out the Dark Lord daughter's reaction:

"Just saw Zero Dark Thirty. Excellent film about years of heroism, including in the enhanced interrogation program, that led to bin Laden."

Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.­ – Stephen Colbert

Zero Dark Thirty’s version of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is a perfect example of “truthiness” and the degradation of truth. ZDT’s filmmakers try to straddle the fence on the question of reality. The film does not open with opening credits and film title. Instead, it displays the following line, white letters against a stark black background: “This is based upon first-hand accounts of real events.” Following this, actual voice recordings of people trapped in the World Trade Center on 9/11 are played. The next scene, stated on screen to be two years later, is of a detainee being tortured by CIA personnel. Credits don’t appear until the entire film is over. All of this is designed to convey the impression of journalistic or documentary veracity.

The average viewer sitting in the theatre will, of course, conclude from ZDT’s opening scenes that the filmmakers have not taken great liberties with the truth. They would be wrong, however, to do so. Most egregiously, Director Kathyrn Bigelow and co-writer Marc Boal decided, for reasons unknown, to present torture as the means by which the U.S. found bin Laden, a patently false representation compared to the actual historical record.

Bigelow and her studio, Sony Pictures, claim that to exclude torture from the story would have been falsifying history. In response to the film, which has been lauded by most of the critics as a masterpiece and the year’s best film, a number of people have described the film, by contrast, as an outrageous apologia for torture - Alex Gibney, Glenn Greenwald, Jane Mayer, Naomi Wolf, actor David Clennon, myself and others – and Sen. Diane Feinstein, Carl Levin and John McCain wrote a letter in protest. Sony, responding to this controversy, issued this statement:

"Zero Dark Thirty does not advocate torture. To not include that part of history would have been irresponsible and inaccurate. We fully support Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal and stand behind this extraordinary movie. We are outraged that any responsible member of the Academy would use their voting status in AMPAS as a platform to advance their own political agenda. This film should be judged free of partisanship.

"To punish an Artist's right of expression is abhorrent. This community, more than any other, should know how reprehensible that is. While we fully respect everyone's right to express their opinion, this activity is really an affront to the Academy and artistic creative freedom. This attempt to censure one of the great films of our time should be opposed.

"As Kathryn Bigelow so appropriately said earlier this week, 'Depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever portray inhumane practices; no author could ever write about them; and no filmmaker could ever delve into the knotty subjects of our time.' We believe members of the Academy will judge the film on its true merits and will tune out the wrongful and misdirected rhetoric."

Amy PascalCo-Chairman, Sony Pictures Entertainment

Bigelow, Boal, and Sony thus have portrayed the criticism of their film as censorship and wrapped themselves in the flag of free expression. But the opposition their film has sparked is not about censorship at all and their characterizing their critics as censorious is dishonest. People who oppose torture want torture to be shown to the American people. The fine 2007 film Rendition, for example, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon, showed torture and was appreciated by those of us who admire well-made films and oppose torture’s immorality and illegality. We would have liked the critics to have appreciated the film rather than slammed it – for political reasons, stated or unstated - as they did, thereby helping to make the film a commercial failure. What ZDT does, by contrast to Rendition, is use torture as an integral part of propelling their story forward in a specious manner. Without the torture in ZDT, bin Laden is never found. To say that ZDT does not advocate torture is like saying that Titanic is not a film about a ship named Titanic that sank.

Bigelow and Boal’s Defense

Bigelow and Boal have called the criticism that their film apologizes for torture “preposterous.” What is their evidence for this? Here is what Boal has said. I have in previous articles here and here cited this quote (and their other statements) but I want to repeat this passage because I want to approach his comment here from a few additional angles:

“The film shows that the guy was waterboarded, he doesn’t say anything and there’s an attack. It shows that the same detainee gives them some information, which was new to them, over a civilized lunch. And then it shows the [Jessica Chastain] character go back to the research room, and all this information is already there -- from a number of detainees who are not being coerced. That is what’s in the film, if you actually look at it as a movie and not a potential launching pad for a political statement.”

If you have seen the film (and even if you haven’t seen it but think closely enough about what Boal says and have other accounts about this incident from those who have seen the film), his explanation is remarkably a) superficial, b) specious, and c) blatantly wrong. Amazingly, the head writer for the film cannot or will not accurately depict what is in his own film in pivotal sequences.

As I have pointed out in previous articles, to accept his explanation that the film does not portray torture producing the key piece of evidence - bin Laden’s courier’s name - you have to ignore a) the fact that Ammar was tortured at length before the “civilized lunch” and b) the fact that Dan, the interrogator, tells him during the lunch that if he doesn’t co-operate with them and tell them what they want, that he can easily hang Ammar from the ceiling again. In other words, Ammar gives them what they want - the courier’s identity - because of torture and the threat of more.

A detainee later in the film interrogated by Maya makes the impact of torture as portrayed in the film very plain once more. After saying to her that he has been tortured before and does not want more of it, he tells her: “Ask me a question and I will answer.”

Further, in the scene in the research room where, according to Boal, Maya discovers that other detainees gave up the courier’s name but not while being “coerced,” Boal claims that Maya learns therefore - and the movie viewer presumably - that the torture of Ammar was not necessary after all. Yet each of these detainees, save possibly one, and there are a number of them that she watches videotapes of giving up the courier’s name, clearly had been tortured before they gave the courier’s name up. All of them were in chains and in various states of stress and extreme exhaustion. But even if Boal’s false characterization of this scene were true and these detainees were not being coerced, then his point that Maya discovers that torture was not necessary at all only works if she was thinking that they had in fact tortured Ammar to give up the courier’s name and realizes that this was unnecessary. So Boal is contradicting himself in yet another way. In the first part of his statement he is claiming that Ammar was not tortured and then in the second part of his statement he is admitting that Ammar was tortured. Which one is it Mr. Boal? His defense, in short, is beyond preposterous from beginning to end.

In yet another scene in the movie, the filmmakers’ attitude about torture and indefinite detention becomes further underscored. While the CIA is trying to convince some White House contacts that they have found bin Laden’s hidden lair and upon being told by the White House reps in response that the CIA has not yet produced any convincing proof that bin Laden is in that house, one of the CIA officials erupts in frustration, "You know we lost the ability to prove that when we lost the detainee program—who the hell am I supposed to ask: some guy in Gitmo who is all lawyered up?"In other words, we can’t get you the direct proof that you want because you’ve tied our hands.

For the average moviegoer who does not know the truth about the CIA’s black sites, does not know that under both Bush and Obama rendition was and has been maintained, and that the very idea that detainees have been “lawyered up” is ridiculous, you would have to think, if the other scenes in the movie did not quite convince you, that going after the “enemy” detainees using every means you have at your disposal, including especially torture, is necessary. You would have to conclude that the detainee/black site program was useful in finding bin Laden’s hiding place, that no detainees were being held any longer other than at Gitmo, and that torture was no longer being used there or anywhere. And you would be wrong about all of this.

But, according to the filmmakers’ comments, in spite of these scenes and the movie’s narrative arc, you would be crazy to think that ZDT’s promoting the use of torture. Bigelow, Boal and Sony Pictures are effectively saying, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?

Which raises another question: How can Bigelow and Boal offer such lame and clearly false explanations?

I have come to conclude that they are just as confident that their paltry rebuttals will work as they are that their false representations in the film itself will work: in other words, what is true does not matter. What matters in their mind is truthiness: the appearance of truth. And there is ample evidence to support their gambit in the honorifics bestowed on the film by critics and much of Hollywood, at least so far, unless the exposures about their lies grow larger, louder and spread more widely.

Before citing some examples of how “truthiness” is working so far, a prefatory remark: their ability to get away with falsehoods paraded around as journalistic truth has been facilitated by the all now too widespread notion that truth is a slippery slope and that interpretation rather than actual hard evidence constitute truth. As I wrote in the Preface to my book, Globalization and the Demolition of Society:

One of the most dangerous forces at work in our world today, perhaps the most dangerous force, is an assault on truth coming from the Right and from some elements of the Left, bolstered by the growing power of increasingly concentrated corporate media, advertising, public relations, and government propaganda, emanating from both major political parties, all trying to convince us of what is true irrespective of actual truth. Stephen Colbert satirically dubbed this trend to downgrade truth as “truthiness”—the semblance of truth. This attack on reality, on science, on reason, and on the Enlightenment is intimately connected to developments in the economy and politics…. Globalization and its political expression, neoliberalism, could not continue to exist and prevail without the degradation of the meaning of truth.

The other factor at work here is that people who should know better, for example, Michael Moore,[i] are being blinded in their response to ZDT by a mistaken desire either to defend ZDT simply because it stars a female protagonist and is directed by a female and/or a desire to feel good about Obama. Their failure or refusal to call ZDT out as a pro-torture movie is at best deeply disappointing and at worse a shameful betrayal of principle.

An Apolitical Film?

Jessica Chastain, who plays Maya in Zero Dark Thirty, is quoted in E! saying, “[T]hey're [those who’ve seen the movie] realizing it's not a propaganda film and it doesn't have an agenda. It just tries to show this moment in history as accurately as possible."

I do not think that you can hold Chastain to the same level of responsibility or understanding of her role and the film, as we should the director and the writer. I think that Chastain could mean what she is quoted as saying: that she does not think she is in a propaganda film and that the film is not trying to push an agenda and is only trying to be faithful to the actual course of events. She is wrong and for her to reach that conclusion requires that she be exceedingly ill informed about the real history that she is supposedly enacting.

Propaganda, Politics, Art, Truth

This brings up the larger questions of what propaganda is, what being political is, what art is, and what being true to history and the facts means in relation to being political. There are a number of mistaken notions about these issues and some clarification is in order.

First, the film is not historically accurate. It is a perverse and malignant false representation of history. Its falsity is exacerbated by their claim to being journalistic – “This film is based upon first-hand accounts of real events.” It would be more accurate if the film were marketed as something coming from the Dick Cheney Archive of History or the CIA Vaults of Recruitment Videos because it conforms to Cheney’s and the CIA”s preferred and bowdlerized view of the world.

Second, how could one possibly do a film about the most politically charged event in recent times, 9/11, and the central political obsession, the War on Terror, and not be political? How could one make a film that features torture and terrorist incidents and not be political? It is not possible and anyone connected to ZDT claiming otherwise is either deliberately obfuscating or does not understand what politics is.

Even leaving aside the unparalleled politicization of the issues being depicted in the film, it is important to point out that no film is ever apolitical, no matter what its topic. Even a film about the search for other planets and the search for the origins of the universe or about polar bears or insects cannot escape politics. Everything we do is political, not political in the sense of “I’m a Republican” or “I’m a Democrat” but political in the sense that politics has to do with the prioritization of what is important to do and what is less important or not important to do with limited resources. How we see the world and our place and that of others in it is inherently political and ideological.

Furthermore, in making a film, writing a book or article, creating a song or poem, choosing what you are going to read, watch, spend time on, engaging in conversation or not, what you talk about and how, how you spend your money and what you do with what you buy and how you discard it, how you treat other people and those of other genders, nations, and so on – these are all political decisions, whether you think about them as political or not. If you choose to let your engine idle while you are standing still parked in a space, that is a political decision, even if the people doing it are not consciously making a political decision: I am not going to worry about the contributions I’m making to global warming and let my engine run, even though I am not going anywhere.

We cannot, any of us, escape making political choices and making decisions every minute we are awake about what we are going to do. We have to choose because we cannot do everything, pay attention to everything, understand everything in multiple ways constantly. These are all political decisions.

When Bigelow and Boal decided that they were going to depict torture in their film, they had to decide what function torture would play in their film. They had to decide how they were going to portray the CIA – as heroes or as something else. They had to decide how they were going to portray Muslims – as villains or as something else. They had to decide what scenes would be included and what they would leave out. These are all political decisions.

Third, saying that everything is inherently political is not the same thing as saying therefore truth does not exist because everyone has their own way of seeing things. This is a complicated matter that requires some exposition to unfold properly – it can take up a whole book - so I am going to focus on answering it here as concisely as possible. Let’s start with the question of the relation between the diversity of individual views and the existence of an objective reality and truth. People, it is true, have their own idiosyncratic way of being, writing, and speaking, but the range of views that exist is limited. That is, all opinions exist on a limited spectrum and can be segregated into a relatively small number of opinions. That is because we are social beings and our individual opinions really do not originate in us but in the groups that we belong to, identify with, or aspire to, and those groups in turn occupy a particular position relative to the key components of the issue in question.

Groups in turn have a specific relationship to the key levers of power and resource distribution in the society. What is in your group interest consequently varies depending upon which group you belong to. If you are a member of the 1%, and you love your money more than justice,[ii] your group has a material interest in maintaining your position of superiority over the resources and the means by which resources are obtained and distributed. You have a material interest in the levers of power remaining in your group’s hands and not having this power distributed differently, as in shared as a public good (e.g., petroleum treated as shared resource rather than privately owned). If you are a member of the bottom 47%, by comparison, your group interests are in conflict with those of the top 1% and your group would be dramatically better off if it could penetrate the fog of deception, misinformation, and use of coercion exercised by the 1% over your group and the rest of the 99%. What is in the 1%’s advantage, concealing the real reasons for political and economic decisions, is to the disadvantage of the rest of the society that is harmed by those actions.

Art cannot escape being political so the question for a work of art such as a film is not whether or not it is making a political statement but what political statement it is making and whether that statement is true or not. Is the history told by ZDT true in that it conforms fairly to historical events? Did the identity of bin Laden’s courier come as a result of torture? The answer is clearly no to both questions. And therefore the political statement being made by ZDT is both false and malignant in this case because it is attempting to convince people that they should support the commission of war crimes, which is what torture is. This offense is made all the more serious because the people behind this are dishonestly claiming that they are not doing precisely what they are doing. This is made clear, besides what is clearly in the film, by the responses from some of the moviegoers who activists have spoken to coming out of the film who say that the movie convinced them that torture was necessary.

Art is never evaluated solely or even mainly on the basis of what the artist intended consciously to do. Even if it could be shown that the filmmakers sincerely believe that they have created an apolitical film and that they did not intend endorse torture, and Bigelow’s comments on wanting to make a film that lionizes the CIA makes such a conclusion impossible to adopt, art is primarily evaluated as to its qualities and its impact.

If Bigelow and Boal Really Were Against Torture…

If Bigelow and Boal did not intend to advocate for torture, then the passionate and closely argued response from so many quarters inside and outside the industry that torture is what we in fact see the film endorsing would lead sincere filmmakers to carry out an examination of their film and find out what it is in the film that leads people to that conclusion. If they are truly against torture and appalled that anyone could conclude that their film is advocating it, then it would not be that hard for them to correct the problem, even without having to alter their film. They could, for example, readily revise the opening sequence of their movie and replace the “based on first-hand accounts of real events” with something like, “This is a work of art, not of journalism, and while many of the events depicted are based on real events, certain artistic liberties were taken in depicting those events. Torture is always a war crime and we do not endorse its use.” After all, is there much more important an issue than the charge that you are endorsing torture? Instead of doing this simple thing, however, Bigelow and Boal have offered patently false statements again and again about what is in their film, where their critics are coming from, and what they intended. The fact that they have responded this way to their critics speaks volumes about their real intentions and the real nature of their film.

What is Torture? What is its Purpose?

Torture is a form of terror, applied to one individual, designed to terrorize a whole people. Torture’s purpose is not intelligence gathering, which is why torturers frequently torture people that they know without a doubt are innocent and who they know know nothing useful. Torture’s purpose is to convince people that those who are doing the torturing will not shrink from doing anything and everything to stay on top and that you should be afraid that you or your loved ones will be the next arbitrarily chosen victim of their unmitigated brutality. This is what the Spanish Inquisitors did to those they suspected of heresy and it is the infamous Spanish Inquisitors, by the way, who invented waterboarding. Torture is not designed to extract the truth. It is designed to coerce people into “confessions” that thereby “prove” the need for torture and that prove who is in charge.

There are several different meanings for the word “propaganda,” some of them are not derogatory, but the most common one and the one that Chastain is using is this: “Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” By this common meaning of the term ZDT is very clearly propaganda inasmuch as it uses not just biased or misleading information, but outrageously consequential false information as a central narrative device for the film, about the most high profile and consequential public policy since 2001, and thereby promotes the idea that it is permissible to torture people and, in fact, that those who did it are heroic. As Bigelow describes it at the film’s premiere:

“I want them to be moved and I want them to know that this is the story, kind of behind, you know, the intelligence community finding this man. These are incredibly brave individuals, dedicated individuals who sacrificed a lot in order to accomplish this mission.”

What is Reality? The Yawning Divide

The debate around ZDT highlights the divide between those who believe that reality is what you believe it to be versus those who hold that reality is something that exists independent of our consciousness. This conflict between conflicting views of reality and truth is no mere scholastic philosophical difference that has no real world consequences. It is a central philosophical debate that has world implications of momentous dimensions.

The first group, those who believe reality is what you think it is, goes by various names - “faith-based,” fundamentalism, relativism, postmodernism, solipsism, etc. – for whom truth is solely a question of personal interpretation – what is true is what I choose to believe to be true. Or, truth is what is declared by sacred texts such as the Bible, the Koran, etc. or by authorities, secular or religious, who are supposed to have special access to the truth.

In the latter group, the empiricists, the world exists independent of our existence and our consciousness of it. Empiricism is the perspective of the Enlightenment.

Empiricism is the foundation for science – the view that empirical evidence (facts, physical evidence, data, things that you can measure, etc.) constitute our world and are the material that we use to examine the validity of our hypotheses and theories about what is going on, what is real, and how things work.

In our courts, the principle is that you first have to prove that someone is guilty by the use of evidence, evidence strong enough to constitute the basis for a finding beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not, or at least it was not enough until the so-called “war on terror” came along, to merely accuse someone to render them guilty; you used to have to prove it using empirical data and a strong and convincing argument based upon the empirical evidence – the facts – which made sensible and supported, rather than undermined, the argument. This form of jurisprudence represented a momentous advance over prior systems of “justice” in which it was enough for the king to detain, torture and/or hang anyone because he was the king. In the principle in play before the Magna Carta, which dates from close to nine hundred years ago, governmental power was unchecked by any limits upon its exercise: the government could do what it wanted, to whoever it wanted to do it to. Fear and superstition reigned rather than reason and evidence. ZDT reflects the reemergence of fear-based discourses designed to override legal principles of due process that came into being historically as a check upon the ruthless exercise of power by authorities. Bush and Obama have both advanced us down this treacherous road of the suspension of due process and guilt by accusation.

Due process and science, in other words, go hand in hand. The absence of due process, tyranny, superstition or anti-rationalist faith, and reasoning by appeal solely to authority (e.g., sacred texts or “revelation”) also go hand in hand.

The advantage of being an empiricist is that there is a means by which we can decide between competing versions of truth via empirical verification. This is what science is based upon: that truth exists and can be determined through empirical evidence and that evidence comes from a world that exists objectively rather than something created and maintained subjectively. Without this independent means of verification, no version of truth can be selected as being superior to any other. Any belief, the notion, for example, that we are really all dreaming the world and that the world has no existence independent of those dreams, is just as reliable and “true” as any other in the absence of that independent criterion.

Apparently, according to Mr. Denson, there is DISCRIMINATE torture (he says earlier: “That was the reason torture was applied to Ammar--to save lives”) and there is INDISCRIMINATE torture.

His comment lets the cat out of the bag: Denson’s been claiming from the beginning that ZDT does not endorse the use of torture and that it in fact opens up for people the reality of torture so that they will come to see that it is bad, yet here he is asserting that torture was used on Ammar to “save lives” and therefore, it was not INDISCRIMINATE torture but presumably, JUSTIFIABLE torture.

Someone should tell him that according to the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, and international law, torture is torture. I have been trying, but I cannot seem to get this through to the man. Perhaps this explains Bigelow, Boal, Sony Pictures, and Denson’s blind spot about the film: perhaps to them, if U.S. agents are using torture, it’s not really torture and therefore that is why they can say with a straight face that the film isn’t endorsing torture.

ZDT is a microcosm of the larger conflict playing itself out on the world scale today, ranging from the personal and individual level to the most macro of levels.

People love the President because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up do not seem to exist. It is the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true? . . . . Truthiness is “What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.” It is not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.

Comments

The phrase "To find a man in hiding, you need an eye in the sky" is obviously referring to drones used for surveillance.

Rather than delete the tweet, ZD30 should have taken the complainers head on.

Most of the people who claim to oppose drone strikes tend to be focused on the ones used for targeted killing. If the critics are also going to whine about "eyes in the skies" then I guess we'll have to assume they'd prefer we set the high-tech stuff aside, and meet al Qaeda on the field of battle armed with the same weapons they use -- RPG's and car bombs.

Maybe the government has some cars left over from Cash For Clunkers, and they can use those.

Randy: If you look at the Al-Jazeera story that discussed the ZDT tweet you will see a screen capture of the link cited in the ZDT tweet. At the top of the page it reads: "Two Decades of Sky-High Technology." Below that section is then headlined: "Rise of the Drones." Below that is "Drones become Stealth." Your interpretation of the phrase about an eye in the sky is thus a reasonably plausible reading of the phrase but when you actually see the linked to page, you can see that it is not as limited as your reading of the phrase itself. It is about the use of drones, which of course partially are used for surveillance but are also most famous for their use in killing people from the skies.

To say that drones are used for "targeted killings" overlooks the fact that only 2% of the deaths from drones have been "militants." The rest, according to the latest study by Stanford Law School, are innocents, including more than 160 children. See http://livingunderdrones.org/report/.

Yes, the page itself also discusses drones used for targeted killing. But that's no different than the fact that they also discuss those drones used by the Navy. It's still a leap to infer that ZD30's tweet was about anything other than "eyes in the sky."

On "only 2% of the deaths from drones have been 'militants,'" you're misreading the 2% figure.

Stanford's original source (Peter Bergen's http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/index.html) says that only 2% were "militant leaders." Most of the rest were lower-level militants.

Bergen also says, "The civilian casualty rate has been dropping sharply since 2008. The number of civilians, plus "unknowns," those individuals whose precise status could not be determined from media reports, reported killed by drones in Pakistan during Obama's tenure in office were 11% of fatalities. So far in 2012 it is close to 2%. Under President Bush it was 33%."

Bergen's article states: "Since it began in 2004, the drone campaign has killed 49 militant leaders whose deaths have been confirmed by at least two credible news sources. While this represents a significant blow to the militant chain of command, these 49 deaths account for only 2% of all drone-related fatalities."

You should note that the Obama Administration's way of counting is that if a male of a certain age is killed he is considered therefore a "militant." If even accepting your citation of Bergen that the accuracy of kills under Obama is better than under Bush, that still doesn't add up to "targeted killings."

You say that as if they're killing every military age male on sight, which you should know is simply not true.

It isn't that accuracy is better than under Bush. It's probably almost the same. The selection criteria are different. The killing of a more senior militant leader may be worth more risk of accidentally killing that leader's friends and family, whereas a lower level militant isn't important enough to risk their families. (It's a shame the militants don't feel that way.)

Your statement still doesn't fit. Bergen's numbers make a distinction between militants and unknowns. There are some obvious signs. If a group is carrying AK-47s and RPGs, it's pretty clear that they're not going shopping for groceries.

Lower-level militants are still militants. They kill far more innocent civilians than drones do. For that matter, the Pakistani Army kills more civilians than drones do.

"The US military seems strangely unaware of the realities of insurgencies. It seems to think there are a limited number of “bad guys,” who can all be killed or captured. The possibility that virtually all able-bodied men in Fallujah supported the insurgency, and that many are weekend warriors, does not seem to occur to them."

I didn't say that they're killing every male of military age on sight. I said that after they've killed people they categorize the dead males of military age as by definition militants. In other words, they are retroactively declaring them legitimate targets.

The central point that you're overlooking here is that accurate or not (and they are NOT accurate by a long shot, as they are killing thousands, the vast majority of them innocents) is that using drones per se in a non-war zone and/or a country that has not given the US permission to wage war in and/or the US is not at war with, is a war crime.

When they hit a target based on the presence of RPGs, and want to assess the casualties, if some of the dead were not personally armed, then it certainly does make a difference whether they were military aged males or children.

The "vast majority of them" are not innocents, as Bergen points out.

Even your own source, livingunderdrones.com (which I could bicker with but won't here) says they've "killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children." That means your sources say that the majority of strikes killed insurgents.

Ask yourself, why are there people who are angry enough at the US that they are willing to commit suicide to do so? What is this insurgency about in the first place? Do you suppose that if another country, say Pakistan, was flying drones over US cities and towns everyday and raining death down upon Americans, including killing over 170 children, that we'd regard that as a friendly gesture of goodwill?

Lest you misunderstand me, I regard anti-state terrorists such as al-Q as just as bad as state terrorism carried out by states like the US. What you're doing is siding with one bunch of terrorists against another set in the course of which hundreds of thousands of innocents are being killed by your side's terrorism.

Our enemies hated us before we had drones. They were willing to commit suicide before 9/11.

The war zone extends beyond Afghanistan.

If one of Pakistan's enemies was launching or planning attacks on them from within the U.S., they could simply demand that we arrest the parties involved. The U.S. has reasonable control over its states and territories. Pakistan cannot full control theirs. That's the difference.

This is why Switzerland tried to shoot down any military aircraft transiting their airspace during WWII. Neutrality means that neither side can use your territory.

9/11 isn't the trigger point. 9/11 is the most dramatic ex. of what Robert Fisk calls blowback. That is what you and I differ starkly on: you regard it as simply a matter of ruthless enemies out for the blood of Americans (the perspective of ZDT) & I know too much history & too much about American foreign policies to see it that simplistically. Both sides of this fight are reactionaries - both the Muslim jihadists & the US imperialists.

First of all, James Cavallaro gave the same numbers. The majority of deaths in drone strikes were not civilians.

But I see where the real problem is. They (and you) do not think drone strikes should be limited only by the laws of war. You want U.S. war efforts limited to the same rules of engagement that local police are subject to.

Cavallaro makes this clear when he says drone strikes are only warranted when U.S. forces are in danger of an imminent attack. Ne doesn't say drone strikes could be okay if allied forces or even Afghan civilians are in imminent danger. Note, too, that nowhere do any of the critics ever demand that the militants should limit themselves to the laws of war -- or any civilized principle.

International law is a series of treaties that we've ratified over the years. You can't seriously believe that we'd have signed onto that when our enemies face no restrictions whatsoever. We didn't even ratify Protocol I and II for that reason.

We want and should expect that the US abides by the treaties that bind it to respect int'l law. The fact that anti-state terrorists aren't abiding by the rules of war doesn't release the US or any other country from complying with int'l law. To accept the argument that this releases them from that duty is to accept the self-serving excuses of Bush and since then Obama for waging their wars for empire. The WOT is a fig leaf excuse. It is not the reason why they're doing what they're doing. See this article of mine: http://dennisloo.blogspot.com/2007/12/fighting-terror-with-terror-bush-and_03.html.

None of the major powers ever signed a treaty limiting wars to police rules. That's why int'l law is on President Obama's side. Even had we ratified Protocol I, it remains the insurgents' responsibility to separate from minors.

You may be confused by the fact that WWII-style terror bombing is outlawed. But directly attacking a presumed enemy is not outlawed -- even with kids nearby. I don't believe there were as many kids killed as you think, but it was still up to you to demand that insurgents stay away from minors. In some cases, insurgent groups are friends of "peace" activists.

Even if the body count figures weren't wildly inflated, most civilian casualties had been killed by other insurgents who didn't want to live under U.N.-supervised elections.

BTW: The U.S. doesn't go into hellholes like Afghanistan "for empire." The Afghans can demand we leave when the treaty expires.

Int'l law is not the same as police rules. Don't know where you are getting that comparison from.

"demand that insurgents stay away from minors?" In your earlier comments you argue that the drone attacks aren't killing many innocents yet you also argue that terrorists can't be separated from the larger population (e.g., in citing Juan Cole's remarks). That's contradictory: either it's a widespread insurgency with a lot of popular support or it isn't. Either "surgical strikes" are possible or they're not. You can't have it both ways.

All of the invaders historically of Afghanistan are out for empire. Suggest you read people like ex-Ambassador Craig Murray.

They're not killing as many innocents as you think, but that doesn't mean I imagine that no children are accidentally killed on occasion.

Let's not forget that "children" probably means anyone under 18, and that's not even certain. (Childrens Defense Fund once used "under 20" in a report on American "children" killed by guns, so I don't take anything at face value.) As to innocence, Cavallaro admits he's giving the benefit of the doubt to the insurgents. A 17 year old insurgent would be classified as a child if he set his rifle down for cleaning before the attack.

Read the post I referred you to. The US military isn't saying that kids are being killed accidentally. It's JUSTIFYING their killing of children as young as a few years old. They're not even saying it's "collateral damage." They're saying these children are legitimate targets.

I read the post you referred me to. And yes, laws of war (a subset of int'l law), do allow things that they ought not. So I take that point. There is the question of a) what is wrong, b) what is illegal, c) what is missing in the law, d) and so on. In the specific instance that sparked this thread, you argued that drones were not being used in a manner consistent with the commission of war crimes. Since you listened to the Cavallaro interview, you heard him talk about "double tapping": a second drone attack aimed at killing those who come to rescue those hit by the first drone strike. Do you think this is acceptable? In Afghanistan it's common for US forces to attack big gatherings including wedding parties. US spokespeople recently justified killing children (who were gathering wood) as combatants. http://dennisloo.com/archives/two-confounding-items-in-the-news-regarding-the-murdering-of-children.html

In the post you referred me to, they're saying the kids are observed directly supporting the insurgency. At the time, it appears the pilots didn't know they were shooting at kids. It was only later that they "raised questions" about the kids' actual innocence.

On "double tapping," if it was being done as Cavallero suggests, I don't think it would be proper. But I doubt that they use double-tapping for the reason he thinks. I'm not going to assume that rumors told by people living in the region are anywhere close to the truth.

If you remember the Baghdad helicopter attack, the pilots were not given permission to attack the rescuing van until it was observed to be removing weapons.

Members of the military or CIA could face criminal charges if they'd deliberately lied to senior officials about what they reported. But when the locals lie, they can only be cheered.

Again, somebody should have told them not to use kids. Incentives matter.

We're going back & forth & I don't think making progress but I can't leave your last comments unretorted. The kids were characterized as supporting the insurgency, but the villagers said that the children were actually gathering firewood. Even if the kids WERE supporting the insurgency, which is not credible, but let's assume arguendo that they were, the US military (and you) are claiming the right to kill them from the air. What kind of army is that that deliberately kills young children?

The people coming to rescue the survivor of the initial attack in Baghdad HAD NO WEAPONS. You should watch the video again.

That's two different things, as you'd noted: The legal right vs. the propriety.

They said they would have had the legal right to attack those children as they believed them to be directly and militarily supporting the insurgency.

They DID NOT say that they knew that they were children at the time of the airstrike. Nor do I believe they'd have attacked if they'd known their ages unless other lives were at stake. It's not always easy to tell the difference from the air.

On the Baghdad airstrike, the rescuers were believed to be picking up weapons (it's in the audio). Furthermore, weapons were found. Ethan McCord (soldier on the scene but critic of the military) agrees that weapons were found there, including RPGs. There are pictures in the leaked report.

Both events could have worked out differently if critics demanded insurgents wear uniforms or other identifying badges.

In response to the U.S. military killing three children, aged 12, 10, and 8, in an airstrike in Helmand, Afghanistan in early December, 2012, the Military Times in a December 3, 2012 article entitled “Some Afghan kids aren’t bystanders,” quotes a U.S. official justifying the killings:

BTW: I won't belabor the point, but please note that you're giving the benefit of the doubt to people who live in a region with general support for the insurgency (even though the majority of Afghans fear them) while assuming that military spokesmen are lying.

Military leaders are subject to being called before Congress, and questioned under oath by members of both parties.

I guess you've never noticed, but Pentagon officials - and other bureaucrats - routinely lie and mislead while under oath. That is how bureaucrats regularly behave. It's in the nature of bureaucracies. That you would put your faith in their taking the oath and not have noticed how frequently they lie speaks to how strong your desire is to believe that your country is doing right and that those villagers, whose normal lives and children are being destroyed before their eyes must all be liars. You seem to be someone who reads but you have a very big blind spot that seriously affects your perceptions and memories. I'm done.

The spokesman was simply observing that kids can pose an actual threat. It's a known fact that the enemy does use kids.

I do believe the military needs to be more careful around these kids for one very good reason: They're the only ones left who care. Insurgents are unwilling to keep kids out of it. They know the critics will give them the benefit of the doubt.

You said you oppose both the U.S. and the insurgents. And yet you assume guilt when the U.S. is accused of something, and assume innocence on the part of insurgents known to use children as human shields. It's not enough to care about kids only when it's another opportunity to criticize the U.S.

Michael Slate had Andy Worthington on a few weeks ago. Why didn't he discuss this with his friends who support the insurgents? How important are the lives of those kids to the critics if they were unwilling to demand they be kept out of the war? It's been 11+ years.

I "assume" nothing. I CONCLUDE based on EVIDENCE, Randy. It is you who are assuming that because the US officials take an oath that they're telling the truth. If you can conclude from what the military is saying that they are only "observing" that kids can pose an actual threat, you aren't reading what he said. He said that they are a legitimate target and he said this to justify their killing kids. Those two statements aren't the same.

I said, "They said they would have had the legal right to attack those children as they believed them to be directly and militarily supporting the insurgency."

This is true. It's legal by int'l law to kill insurgents regardless of their age.

But the spokesman said insurgent kids are a threat. He did not say they kill them every chance they get.

You're turning a war crime of theirs (the insurgents' use of children), giving them the benefit of the doubt (you believed the story that those kids were only gathering firewood), and blaming the U.S. for the outcome.

After 11 years, somebody should have told them to keep kids out of it.

I didn't say "they kill them every chance they get." I said that they are declaring that young children are legitimate targets.

It's a distortion to say otherwise. It's like saying: "The KKK doesn't say that they'll kill black people every chance they get, therefore, they aren't saying that they consider blacks legitimate victims to murder."

U have a pronounced tendency to mince words in ways that don't actually reflect what someone's saying. It's not because you can't think, because u can clearly think & do seek out info, which is to your credit. However, because your value system & perspective affects how u evaluate facts & statements, u tend to distort what's going on to match your perspective rather than accurately seeing what's going on.

Everyone has a perspective but the test comes in whether they allow facts to be the basis of their conclusions or not. If something's true & it means that one's view has to change, then do so.

Either you did not understand what I meant, or you do not understand the laws of war.

When children become combatants, they become LEGAL targets. That's what is meant by "legitimate." This is a fact.

That does NOT mean it's nice to kill them. I'm sure the military does what it can to avoid doing this when possible. But it does mean that it's legal. And when kid insurgents are about to threaten lives, it becomes urgent that they be stopped.

Since nobody's telling the insurgents to stop using kids, that sometimes means killing the kids.

Using child soldiers is a war crime. Killing them is not. The blame rests entirely on the insurgents.

Like I said, it's been over 11 years. Those who are sympathetic to the insurgents' cause (e.g. Worthington) should have told their friends and allies to stop using children. For 11+ years, they decided the rights of Gitmo detainees were infinitely more important than the lives of children.

In Europe, most thermal pools have these jets and you can put it onto your palms, then rub the palms together to sensual massage heat the oil.This suggests the vagal nerve network is capable of sending satiety" I'm full" signals to the brain, effectively reducing appetite.TheiJoy 130 Human Touch Massage Chairis a reclining comfy chair which contains rollers inside which go up and down.

I am a developer and I have just come up with a revolutionary social networking internet site. I am also in the market for beta evaluators to search and give it a go. Are you looking to opt-in? We are going to compensate you.